Over a five hour exposure, astronomers were able to tease out the color spectrum reflected from extra-solar planet HR 8799c. (Source: European Southern Observatory/Markus Janson)

The Phoenix Mars Lander is visible in a color-enhanced photograph captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Obriter. (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

The month of January has been good to space science so far.

It has been just over one year since
NASA last heard from the Phoenix Mars Lander. Like many of the other
lander missions to Mars, Phoenix worked long past its intended
mission duration, nearly doubling its operational time of three
months. However, in November of 2008, Mars’ northern latitudes
simply didn’t receive enough sun for the lander to continue to
power itself.

NASA
will be monitoring for radio communication attempts from the Phoenix
with the Mars
Odyssey craft which is presently in orbit over Mars. Should no
signals be received, they will try again in February and
March.

Ultimately, even if the craft does not rise like a
phoenix from its icy grave, it has transmitted a wealth of
information about the Martian surface and atmosphere during its
all-too-brief lifespan.

Astronomers from Caltech have spotted
the second smallest confirmed exoplanet using the Hawaiian Keck I
telescope. The 10 meter lens coupled with the High Resolution Echelle
Spectrometer (HIRES) viewed the planet by way of radial velocity
measurement. An orbiting planet causes a star to wobble, and as it
wobbles, its detectable light is shifted towards red or blue. The
HIRES instrument captures this shift and astronomers can calculate
the planet’s mass and orbital characteristics using the data.

Another exoplanet,
HR 8799c, has received the honor of being the first planet for which
a direct
observation of atmospheric chemical composition has been made.
The observations were made using the European Southern Observatory’s
Very Large Telescope. The planet is roughly ten times of the mass of
Jupiter and orbits between two to two and half times the distance
from HR 8799 as Uranus does our Sun.

Two major factors
combined make these observations laudable. First, HR 8799 is a very
bright star, shining nearly five times as bright as the Sun, though
having only approximately and one and a half times its mass. Second,
the planetary system is on a plane nearly perpendicular to Earth’s
point of view, rather than parallel as most observed extra-solar
systems have been. Scientists observing parallel plane systems can
use a deductive method for capturing spectra, comparing a star’s
measured data before, after and during a planetary eclipse, to find
out which light was coming from the star and which from the planet.
In a perpendicular orbital system, this is not possible as the planet
and star are both in view at all times.

“It's like trying to
see what a candle is made of, by observing it from a distance of two
kilometres when it’s next to a blindingly bright 300 Watt lamp,”
explains Markus Janson, lead author of the paper describing the
measurements and methods used to capture HR 8799c’s direct
spectra.

Understanding what a planet’s atmosphere is
composed of can help planetary scientists understand how it was
formed. This in turn will help them understand how solar systems may
be formed as a whole.

HR 8779 can be found in the Gemini
constellation. Aside from three giant planets, it also has two debris
belts similar to our own solar system’s asteroid and Kuiper belts.

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